Laws are adopted, policies implemented, hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in staff training, then what ? This exploratory research seeks to shed some light on what is actually happening at Canadian borders offices across Quebec and highlight the discrepancies between Canada's engagement toward combating human trafficking and actual practices in the field by border services officers.
To do so we interviewed seven Canada Border Services officers working at Montreal's Pierre- Elliott-Trudeau international airport, Canada's fourth biggest international port of entry and Quebec's first, so we could learn about their professional knowledge and experience in regard to human trafficking. We also spoke to four victim services providers so we could learn about the victims' experiences with this law enforcement federal agency and the impacts of those experiences on them.
If the interviewed officers seem to have a good idea, albeit very much influenced by the media, of what is transnational human trafficking, few are those who have hands-on experience of the phenomenon. The lack of continuous and substantial information and training, the perceived role of the Canada Border Services Agency by its officers as well as the lack of leadership by its direction, all in regard to transnational human trafficking, seem to be major hindrances to the political willingness of the Canadian government at large, and the Canada Border Services Agency in particular, to fight the global war against transnational human trafficking on its own turf. The hurdles are plenty in the fight against transnational human trafficking at Canadian borders and they represent a sizeable challenge that is both complex and complicated. Since no amount of wishful thinking will stop transnational human trafficking from happening in Canada, an approach that is centred on prevention at the borders and a greater awareness by Canada Border Services officers of the matter might just get Canada a little bit closer to that goal.